hi! i noticed in your pinned post that you said you try to include your hungarian heritage when it comes to your craft. may i ask for some recommendations regaring this? i'm hungarian myself but everything is about catholicism these days and i couldn't really find good books about the old ways.
thank you in advance, hope you have a wonderful day!
Oof. Idk if I can really provide recommendations tbh- at least not comfortably.
This is a tricky question as I am someone who supplements much of her craft with academic literature and research. Things like anthropological studies, folkloric studies, historical papers, etc.
However, there has in fact been an ongoing reframing of history in main-stream Hungary since the 1970s, influenced by nationalist rhetoric and spurred by a romanticized view of that history started by academics as early as the late 1800s .
These academics, inspired by the current European Romantic ideology of the time, sought to uncover the "true" history of Hungary that would illuminate the pre-conquest ethnic and cultural practices of ancient Hungarians. Though there are many notable academics we can trace back to the foundation of this reframing, one of the most well known is Vilmos Diószegi.
Diószegi worked incredibly hard to prove that Hungary's spiritual history was tied to a mysterious historical figure called a 'Taltos'. It was Diószegi's belief that the 'Taltos' was a Finno-Urgic-based, Turkic style 'shaman' who assisted in priestly duties in their respective communities and used a drum to enter an ecsatcy induced trance. Diószegi would even go on to theorize what the Taltos 'shamanistic world view' would have entailed. However, many scholars, including Éva Pócs, doubt these theories and have pointed to inconsistencies in Diószegi's research and reconstruction. Though there was undoubtedly Turkic influence, these scholars suggest that the Taltos has more in common with pre-christian Balkan, Bulgarian and Southern Slavic traditions.
Now, overall there wouldn't usually be a problem with that. Disagreements happen in academia all the time. The issue is that Diószegi's work is treated as absolute, and is the basis for most modern Hungarian paganism and reconstruction due to the unique ethnic and cultural identity it can provide. A cultural identity Hungarian Nationalists love to hold up on a pedestal and point to as evidence of a glorious and mystical past that existed before Christianity and, of course, Jewish People.
Therefore, when studying Hungarian paganism and folk practices one has to be discerning. Despite Diószegi's influence on Hungarian Academia as a whole, it doesn't mean it's all without merit (it doesn't necessarily mean all of Diószegi's work is completely without merit either, just that it shouldn't be treated as gospel especially with the inconsistencies surrounding it and the romantic european foundation it was already working from). For instance Mihály Hoppál's work has been known to research not only "modern" (60's and 70's) Hungarian folk practices, but source them by region. I've learned much from his detailing of Hungarian folk practices- I just don't take everything he has to say as fact. I question it and compare it with other research- rigorously.
As for the Catholic element of Hungarian practices, my personal take is this: Embrace it. That isn't to say that you should become a Christian or even agree with Christianity. Despite the fact that I, myself, am not Christian, I personally just find it unrealistic to separate the two. Christianity has been established in Hungary since the year 1000. Over that time the 'old ways' and Christian practices have undoubtedly been syncretized past the point of being able to concretely tell them apart. This is the fundamental problem I have with reconstruction as a whole, because much of it tries to simply omit Christain concepts from folk traditions without, ironically, realizing that in doing so we may be equally erasing pre-christain approaches and philosophies. They're just too entwined. My closest ancestors were catholic as opposed to pagan. Granted, weird catholics who saw things and knew things, but catholics none the less. Their history and traditions are just as valid, and are also just as important as the pre-christian beliefs that undoubtedly found themselves braided into that same history and those same traditions.
I'm sorry if this doesn't really answer your question, but regardless I hope you found it helpful.
